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Home » Community » Coffee corner » Is it time for a dark theme?
Is it time for a dark theme? [message #50129] Fri, 03 August 2018 16:54 Go to next message
cbpporter is currently offline  cbpporter
Messages: 1401
Registered: September 2007
Ultimate Contributor
I think we had this conversation many times before, but is time for an official top notch pretty dark theme?

I'm a bit in the business of writing IDEs and people want dark UI skins. It is rather popular right now.

I'm just about to implement it for CodeEditor, but a dark editor skin on a light UI is weird to me.

I have this themeing API I wrote a decade ago or so and tested that it works perfectly today (congrats Mirek on not breaking Chamelon all these years), but the two skins I have are very ugly.

So if anybody knows some free/OSS skins we can legally copy, I'll be glad to implement them.

Alternative is WindowsBlinds with CodeEditor skin, but that takes over the entirety of Windows.
Re: Is it time for a dark theme? [message #50130 is a reply to message #50129] Fri, 03 August 2018 17:23 Go to previous messageGo to next message
cbpporter is currently offline  cbpporter
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Registered: September 2007
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https://draculatheme.com/jetbrains/
http://www.material-theme.com/
Re: Is it time for a dark theme? [message #50135 is a reply to message #50129] Sun, 05 August 2018 17:23 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mr_ped is currently offline  mr_ped
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Registered: November 2005
Location: Czech Republic - Praha
Experienced Contributor
I'm using "Breeze Dark" in the OS, looks IMO quite nice (KDE5.13 in distro "neon") (it's linux of course, people are still using windows? Shocked weird...).

Not sure about its license and can't right now quickly google the original source, but if it's part of KDE, it should be... actually did find some licensing policy rules https://community.kde.org/Policies/Licensing_Policy = breeze icons should be LGPL3, not sure how that fits...

[Updated on: Sun, 05 August 2018 17:24]

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Re: Is it time for a dark theme? [message #50138 is a reply to message #50135] Mon, 06 August 2018 12:48 Go to previous messageGo to next message
cbpporter is currently offline  cbpporter
Messages: 1401
Registered: September 2007
Ultimate Contributor
Let's start slow.

First, I'll try to implement https://github.com/hugoferreira/greater-monokai

Just the syntax highlighting colors to see how it looks and if I like it.

It has pink, cyan, green and orange as main colors Razz.
Re: Is it time for a dark theme? [message #50139 is a reply to message #50138] Mon, 06 August 2018 13:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
cbpporter is currently offline  cbpporter
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OK, I just discovered that there is some support for this in code editor.
Re: Is it time for a dark theme? [message #50140 is a reply to message #50129] Mon, 06 August 2018 13:11 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mr_ped is currently offline  mr_ped
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Registered: November 2005
Location: Czech Republic - Praha
Experienced Contributor
Yup, there already *is* "dark" colour scheme in the IDE, but the total look of IDE is still abysmal (with some icons using transparency wrongly expecting white background only, etc...). But it is usable.
Re: Is it time for a dark theme? [message #50141 is a reply to message #50140] Mon, 06 August 2018 14:30 Go to previous messageGo to next message
cbpporter is currently offline  cbpporter
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mr_ped wrote on Mon, 06 August 2018 14:11
Yup, there already *is* "dark" colour scheme in the IDE, but the total look of IDE is still abysmal (with some icons using transparency wrongly expecting white background only, etc...). But it is usable.

In TheIDE or CodeEditor? So far I only found CodeEditor support.

Setting TheIDE to dark must be done though a third party, like WindowsBlinds or Linux theme?
Re: Is it time for a dark theme? [message #50142 is a reply to message #50141] Mon, 06 August 2018 14:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
cbpporter is currently offline  cbpporter
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Registered: September 2007
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Yeah, I'm not fond of the default dark color scheme.

Here is V0.1 of Monokai:
index.php?t=getfile&id=5637&private=0


I need to update the side bar for the dark theme too, but otherwise a decent starting point.

The block levels need to be recolored for sure.
  • Attachment: syn.png
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Re: Is it time for a dark theme? [message #50143 is a reply to message #50129] Tue, 07 August 2018 10:01 Go to previous messageGo to next message
cbpporter is currently offline  cbpporter
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Registered: September 2007
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So I finished CodeEditor::Bar. For now it is a bit hacky.

The real question is how to continue from here.

I'm guessing I need to determine all the colors, like SColorShadow and SColorPaper. Based on colors from the syntax highlight? Tweak them around until most of the GUI looks decent? Things like backrounds and lists and ArrayCtrl.

I probably need to tweak colors like Red and Blue too. Some shades looks good on white and really bad on very dark gray and the other way around.

Then as a last step is to create control skins.
Re: Is it time for a dark theme? [message #50166 is a reply to message #50129] Fri, 10 August 2018 17:37 Go to previous messageGo to next message
cbpporter is currently offline  cbpporter
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Registered: September 2007
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I'm progressing nicely, doing stuff in my offtime, but I have hit a problem: the RichTextCtrl used by annotation_popup. I'm setting the Background and TextColor and it looks nice, but I'm also setting the content of it with QTF and coloring some words.

These colors are ignored. I'm using a standard qtf sample:
qtf = "[@4 Green text] [$(255.220.200) Pink background]";

Touching TextColor or even some fields like SColorText_Write will make QTF ignore colors.
Re: Is it time for a dark theme? [message #50177 is a reply to message #50166] Thu, 16 August 2018 09:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
cbpporter is currently offline  cbpporter
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Registered: September 2007
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OK, somehow I ruined QTF color display.

Even installed a fresh U++...
Re: Is it time for a dark theme? [message #50178 is a reply to message #50177] Thu, 16 August 2018 09:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
cbpporter is currently offline  cbpporter
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Registered: September 2007
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cbpporter wrote on Thu, 16 August 2018 10:35
OK, somehow I ruined QTF color display.

Even installed a fresh U++...

Ha, found it!

annotation_popup.TextColor(HighlightSetup::hl_style[HighlightSetup::INK_NORMAL].color);


Setting text color overrides both foreground and background colors.
Re: Is it time for a dark theme? [message #50179 is a reply to message #50178] Thu, 16 August 2018 10:11 Go to previous message
cbpporter is currently offline  cbpporter
Messages: 1401
Registered: September 2007
Ultimate Contributor
Using:
SColorPaper_Write(Color(51, 51, 51));

to set the paper color to dark gray causes QTF to not be displayed correctly. This looks to be intentional:

void  RichTextView::Paint(Draw& w)
{
        ...
	Color c = SColorPaper();
	if(Grayscale(c) < 100)
		pi.coloroverride = true;
        ...
}


This kills qtf RichTextView color display.

So I need some input on this issue.

Setting colors can only get you so far and you need to skin the GUI with chameleon.

So we need to set both and still U++ needs to be made aware if the theme is dark or light.

For some elements it is enough to set colors and chameleon. For some others, they need to know if the theme is dark or light. Like EditorBar. To select dark or light icons. Additionally, both CodeEditor and EditorBar might need and override. You may want a normal GUI with a dark editor.

So there should be a global default that each control can override? In practice only super advanced text based controls will need overrides, like CodeEditor?
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